


like an earring through a closed-off hole

by Monstrous_Femme



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: F/F, rarepair event
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2019-05-24 15:36:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14957334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Monstrous_Femme/pseuds/Monstrous_Femme
Summary: Alice no longer fits in her old skin, except when she does.Poppy's just looking for the math to make a mirror bridge.





	like an earring through a closed-off hole

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the @magiciansfemslash Rarepair event!

The words were writhing under Alice’s skin, desperate to be set loose into the world. She scribbled frantically, perched vulture-like on the stool next to her desk. This was a dangerous game, writing on the secrets of the universe for anyone to stumble upon and use for their own ends. But Alice knew by now that whatever she didn’t release with words would find its way out of her through other means. 

_A mirror bridge creates an antimatter fold in the fabric of space-time, suspending—_

The door to her bedroom burst open, and there stood Poppy Kline.

“What are you doing here?” Alice asked, heart pounding. She returned to her notetaking, acting as casual and unbothered as she was able. “Shouldn’t you be reading advanced texts on theoretical physics and realizing how in over your head you are?”

“Actually, I came here to steal your notes,” Poppy said. She folded her arms in front of her chest. “We thought you were out. But since you’re in your room after all, can we skip to the part where I win the argument and you hand them over?”

Alice rolled her eyes. “That sort of charming brashness might be enough to win over Quentin, but I meant what I said. I have nothing to gain from helping you break into the library.”

“Looking for what’s in it for you. A woman after my own heart.” Poppy took a step further into the room. “It’s too bad I’ve already slept with Quentin. Normally I’d be all over a chick like you, but he seems like the kind of guy who’d take me sleeping with his ex personally, and I need him on my side right now.”

“Not that I’m going to fall for you hitting on me to get at my notes, but if we ever did have sex there’s no reason Quentin would ever have to find out.” Alice finished the sentence she was writing, then closed the notebook and hugged it to her chest. She couldn’t keep her fingers still. They tapped against the skin of the notebook as if controlled by some external force.

“What do you have against getting magic back, anyway?” Poppy asked. She shut the door and sat cross-legged on Alice’s bed, bouncing twice as she settled in. “You used to be a niffin, right? It seems to me like you’d be all over this”

“That’s really none of your business.”

“Yeah, but I’m nosey.”

“Magicians have made a pretty big mess of magic,” Alice said, reciting her go-to explanation for the feelings of ants crawling along her skin that arose at the concept of magic’s return. “It’s been used for evil so often. If I help bring it back, people will use it for bad things.”

Poppy raised an eyebrow. “If you help bring it back, people will use it for good things, too,” she said. “Why are you only responsible for the bad ones?”

_Because there’s not enough blood in the human body for me to drain what I need to for answers and still survive. Because I’m not sure I really did survive. Because even an attempt to stay safe leads to terrible things; exploding cats and murdered fathers._

“Exactly,” Poppy said, taking Alice’s silence as the answer she’d been hoping for. “You don’t control outcomes. If you help bring back magic, you’re helping give people freedom. What could be bad about that?”

Alice’s laugh came out as a harsh wheeze. “Right, because nothing’s ever gone wrong when people are free to do whatever they want.”

“What do _you_ want?” Poppy asked. “Forget everyone else. What do you want for you?”

A stream of images flooded Alice’s mind, her thoughts crowding out the words the way they sometimes did nowadays. Moths and bright light and entrapment in someone else’s body, the tightness of being squeezed into such a small space, the lights that came out of lamprey’s bodies in their death and warmed her in the night, the tightness of being squeezed into an even smaller space, someone else’s body, her own. 

Poppy had been right about one thing. Magic was freedom.

“I want to finish my Grand Unified Theory of Magic and maybe get back at Quentin.” The words tumbled out of her mouth before she’d had a chance to consider them.

“Ooh, juicy,” Poppy said. “Get back at him for what?”

_The enclosed space of a body that is not her body. A shade put back in a hole far too small for a shade, like forcing an earring through a closed-up hole. Waking up each day into a nightmare of memories that no longer line up with the conscience she is beginning to learn how to use again._

“He cheated on me once when we were together,” Alice said. The words sounded hollow and false, but so much of what she said these days sounded that way that she was certain it’d go unnoticed. “He was one of the first people I ever fully trusted.”

“That blows,” Poppy said cheerfully. “But that’d be an easy one to get back at him for, wouldn’t it? I’ll just tell him I fucked you. He’d hate that, even though _he_ thought having sex with me was fair game. But it’ll have to be after we storm the library. Like I said, I need him on my side right now.”

Alice shook her head. Her body felt heavy and slow, and her skin buzzed with the need to write more, to remember more, to _be_ more. “I don’t want to lie to him.”

“Who says it’d be a lie?” Poppy asked, waggling her eyebrows, and something in Alice’s chest broke.

She rose unsteadily, her legs betraying her as they struggled to remember what it was to walk. She took two and a half steps towards Poppy, then stopped. 

“Don’t do that,” she said. Her voice came out shaky and all-too-human.

“Do what?”

“Don’t pretend you want to have anything to do with me just because I have something you need.”

Poppy rose to her feet and stepped into Alice’s space. “Who says I’m pretending?” she asked. “What, can’t a girl have an ulterior motive _and_ think you’re cute and probably good in bed?”

In her old life, Alice would have shrunk around a girl like this. Poppy flirted with such ease, the transparency of her real reasons doing nothing to overshadow how well she did it, the confidence with which she moved. Alice doubted Margo could pull it off; the flirting, yes, but the straightforwardness of the lies took an expert hand.

“ _If_ we were to have sex,” Alice said, trying to keep her voice casual even as her hands shook. “I still wouldn’t give you my notes.”

“Fine,” Poppy said. “But _you_ should probably know that I’m going to try to steal them anyway.”

Alice nodded and took a step closer. Her heart was beating faster. She could feel it in her chest, always, the constant reminder of what she no longer was. Poppy grinned and put a hand on the side of Alice’s hip. 

How dare she. How dare she be standing here with that cocky grin as though she weren’t on a mission to bring back the one thing Alice wasn’t allowed to participate in. How dare she be so clearly human, when after all this time Alice was still struggling to remember how to breathe.

Alice moved an inch closer let their lips meet softly in the space between their bodies. She felt as though she might be running out of oxygen, but that was impossible. She felt as though time were running backward and she was running headlong into the girl she used to be, but that was impossible too. The old Alice never would have kissed a girl like this, sliding her fingers into the hair of someone who cared nothing for her, only the things she knew she had to gain from this.

Alice, or whoever she was these days, knew exactly what people would do for the things they thought they needed.

It didn’t matter. Poppy’s mouth was sweet and warm, and maybe Alice had something to gain from this as well, some sort of momentary forgetfulness that she hadn’t received in a very long time.

*

They laid on opposite sides of the bed. Alice wrapped a sheet around herself, not sure she wanted to speak after what had happened.

She was supposed to be different, after everything. She shouldn’t still feel this hollowed-out and vulnerable after sex. What was the last year for, if not to change her?

Maybe she _was_ still Alice. Maybe that’s all she’d ever get to be.

“What would you do with it?” she asked softly, turning so she could look Poppy in the eye. “If you really managed to get magic back, what would you do with it?”

Poppy shrugged. “Honestly? I’d use it as a day to day convenience and occasionally to go places where I could see dragons. And maybe to fight off the dragons if things got out of hand.”

“Right.” Alice sunk back against her pillows. A day to day convenience. Was that all it had ever been? All of the death, and the fighting, and the sacrifice, so that they could avoid some of the banality of regular life? As a niffin, she’d known there was more to it than that, but at this moment she wasn’t sure she could remember what it was. 

“What about you?” Poppy asked.

Alice shook her head. “Last time I came close to having magic back, I almost killed someone. I don’t think—honestly, I should probably find other things to do with myself.”

“Well, at least you know who you are,” Poppy said. “But I think you know the rest of us are going to keep trying for as along as we can. So. Want to help stop Victoria from dying horribly in a botched mirror bridge?”

And really, what did she know? 

Alice got to her feet, resisting the urge to cover her body. Everything that lingered, she would shed. It was important not to move backwards, that much she knew. She grabbed the notebooks off her desk and all but threw them them into Poppy’s arms.

“Take them,” she said. She blinked angrily, forcing tears away from her eyes. “Just give them back when you’re done, okay? I—I need them. I can’t finish my theory without them.”

Penny took the books, half a smile gracing her face. “Seems kind of silly to make a Grand Unified Theory for something you don’t want to exist.”

Alice looked away. There were birds on the tree outside of her window. Their high-pitched chirping made her want to tear off her skin. “When I was a kid, I had nightmares about wolves. At least one, every week. I told my brother Charlie, and he brought me every book he could find about wolves. The more I read them, the less scary the dreams got.”

“That’s a long-winded way of saying you’re scared of magic and wish you weren’t.”

“Maybe that’s not what I’m saying,” Alice snapped. She looked Poppy square in the eye. “I want the books back by this time tomorrow. And don’t tell Quentin I gave them to you. He’ll think there’s an ulterior motive.” She paused. “Actually, don’t tell him any of this. I’ll find a different way to get back at him. One that fits better.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll keep your dirty little secret,” Poppy said with a wink. She walked through the door and shut it behind her. 

Alice dropped heavily back onto the bed. She leaned back against the headboard and pulled her knees to her chest, her breaths coming out in gasps. When she glanced out the window again, the birds were gone. She hadn’t even noticed that their noise had stopped.


End file.
